References to transgender and queer people were removed Thursday from the National Park Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, a site honoring the 1969 uprising that helped spark the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The changes follow President Donald Trump’s executive order redefining sex as strictly male or female. Words like “transgender” and “queer” were deleted, and LGBTQ was shortened to LGB in references to the civil rights movement.
“This is just cruel and petty,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.”
Stonewall advocates condemned the move, calling it an attempt to rewrite history. “They’re trying to literally cis-wash LGBTQ history,” said Stacy Lentz, CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative. “It is very alarming.”
Angelica Christina, a board director for the initiative, said the erasure was expected given Trump’s repeated attacks on the trans community but was especially disturbing because “the Stonewall Inn has always been a safe haven for the LGBT community.”
The monument’s homepage previously noted that “almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal” before the 1960s. By Thursday, the wording had changed to exclude transgender and queer individuals.
The National Park Service has not commented on the revision. Timothy Leonard of the National Parks Conservation Association said, “Erasing letters or webpages doesn’t change history or the contributions of the transgender community.”
President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument in 2016, and a $3.2 million visitor center opened last year in partnership with the park service to further tell its story.
Trump’s order defines sex solely by reproductive biology, a move conservatives praise as protecting women from “gender extremism.” However, experts like the American Medical Association affirm that gender is a spectrum, not a binary.
